goose

Bringing Origi on in the 90th minute took me back about 10 years to the days when N’Gog was the only forward on the subs bench. Horrible feeling.

Did you find one? I’m still looking.

"However, Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said earlier this year that VAR was delivering on the “principal reason” for its introduction in improving the accuracy of decision-making. “In key match incidents we are up to 94% accuracy with officials, 97% with their assistants, so we are seeing an impact on results and a positive impact on the league table,” he said." No, you idiot, the point is to make the game more enjoyable and in that it is failing spectacularly. I've told my wife that we are getting VAR installed in the bedroom. She says that it'll be off-putting having weird little men from Stockley Park drawing lines all over her fanny, but I've explained that it's important to improve the accuracy of our love-making.

He’s been impermeable. Perfect for shoring up a leaky defence.

I think that their reaction indirectly put pressure on the VAR ref. No idea if it had an influence as these sorts of decisions are completely subjective (and therefore shouldn’t be subject to VAR in the first place). Great report as ever. I agree with all of it except that for me the end of the game really was the moment I allowed myself to start to believe. There’s no logic to it but when you’ve spent the best part of 20 years - because it took about 10 to sink in - thinking that Liverpool would never again win the title in your lifetime, then the evidence has to be pretty overwhelming to change that.

The value of an option to buy something at market value is zero as, by definition you are only getting the right to buy something for what you would have had to pay for it in the first place. Having a right of first refusal may have some minor value but paying 30 million quid In this instance is just an attempt to get round FFP. And a pretty obvious one at that.

I’m happy the handball was over turned in that game but so far I would say that the benefit of a small number of incidents being rightly corrected by VAR is hugely outweighted by all the negatives the process brings. So would I sacrifice the odd bad decision in a season for being able to celebrate goals properly again? Yes, absolutely.

Thanks a lot, great quiz. Must go and look for the backward toilet seat thread. By the way, where is Nunavut Patrick, he normally wins these things hands down.

Can you send it to me too please?

I dreamt last night that Van Dijk did his hamstring from playing too many games and was out for six weeks, so Henderson at centre half is fine by me.

Big game this after the Napoli result so I think it’s right we go full strength. Good to see AOC in midfield where he belongs, a chance for him to step up.

Who says Mourinho’s teams don’t play entertaining football?

I have seen absolutely nothing in the media or from the authorities explaining the whole handball thing. As far as I can tell: Michael Oliver didn’t see the Silva handball and deemed the TAA handball accidental. VAR checked the TAA handball and agreed it was accidental. As a result, the Silva handball was irrelevant (not leading to a goal scoring opportunity), play was allowed to continue and we scored. If VAR had decided that the TAA handball was a penalty then they would have reviewed the Silva handball which lead to it and Liverpool would have got a free kick. So Man City were never getting a penalty, even though the decision was debatable. And of course the whole VAR thing is complete bollocks; when Fabinho scores a worldie we should all be jumping up and down screaming, not scratching our chins about retrospective reinterpretations of shite regulations.

Top, top notch. Been looking forward to this and it didn’t disappoint.

Great report, as always. Against Sheffield United Mané was fouled in the box and didn’t make anything of it. No penalty given. Funnily enough I haven’t heard anyone bring that up when discussing whether he dived. If officials (and fucking VAR) had the balls to give fouls in the first place then players wouldn’t feel the need to point them out by falling over.

It looked like a clear penalty in real time. On review, it turned out to be a dive. This is exactly what VAR was introduced to sort out and if it can’t even get that right it should be fucked off.

I’m on season 1 episode 6 of Prison Break, I must be a bit behind the curve. I’m a bit disappointed to hear that there are four more seasons to go, I was kind of hoping that Michael would, well, escape. What does he do when he goes to a new prison, wash off his tattoos and start again? No spoilers please. Completely, completely agree about VAR. Football without wild jubilation/burning sense of injustice just isn’t football.

Happy birthday mate. I'm one of those old fellas you see wondering around - I'm 51 - and I feel exactly the same as you. Loving these and the report cards by the way, it's like having a chance to sit down every few days and think "Ah, champions of Europe".

Great report, as always. My problem with Henderson wasn't the foul, it was the way he turned his back afterwards and trotted away like some kind of labrador. He absolutely has to stand up and stop the quick free kick.

Fixed that for you.

The kind of night which makes you wonder why you bother with football at all, truly horrible. Thankfully they've been few and far between recently. i got the impression that Mané was playing a bit deeper and didn't quite know what to do. He kept on beating players in the middle of the park when it didn't make much difference and not when he was up against the last defender.

Great report as ever. At the end of the game I was pissed off we didn't get a clean sheet which shows just how good we were. Agree about Milner and it'll be interesting to see whether he starts against PSG.

Brilliant or insane, I'm not sure which.

Firmino seems to need games to get up to full fitness; wasn't he a bit slow starting last season as well? On the other hand, pllaying games seems to have the opposite effect on Sturridge. I'd definitely keep him on the bench.

I think it's going to be a lot harder for teams to press us with the kind of distribution that he's capable of. Last season we had had two keepers who weren't confident with their feet and a lot of the midfield weren't comfortable receiving the ball under pressure. As a result we dropped too deep and surrendered a lot of points from winning positions. With Alisson and Keita it's going to be much harder for teams to do that. One of the features of the West Ham game was how easily we played through the press and found space in midfield.